


Words Unspoken

by Chichuri



Category: Tin Man
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-14
Updated: 2007-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-03 18:32:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chichuri/pseuds/Chichuri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>DG asks Cain about Adora.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Words Unspoken

**Author's Note:**

> First foray into a new fandom.

With DG curled up safe in his arms, Cain dozed. If she was here, she wasn't off getting herself into trouble, and if she did get a hankering to hare off, she couldn't move without him knowing it. But more, when she was here in his arms something deep inside began to relax and jagged edges softened.

He had thought she was asleep when she asked, voice soft and curiously wistful, "What was she like?"

He ran gentle fingers through her hair and down her back, imprinting her into his skin so that no matter what happened he could relive the memory. He had hundreds already, yet never enough. "Who?"

"Adora. What was she like?"

He finally opened his eyes to find DG intently watching, face shadowed by the curtain of hair tumbling over her shoulders and tickling his chest.

"Sweet," he said, eyes never leaving hers, "and soft spoken. Loved children; she was heartbroken when she found out Jeb would be our only one. Stubborn when she knew she was right. Believed that doing what was needed wasn't easy, and that sometimes the hardest things were the most important. She used to say that if everyone put the safety of their friends and families ahead of doing what was right, Azkadellia's rein of terror would never end." He smiled slightly at the memory. "I joined the Resistance with her blessing."

She broke his gaze, fingers rubbing a restless pattern onto his chest. "You really loved her."

"Her death, my family's destruction, shattered me." After eight annuals of living hell, the man who came out of the tin cage was not the same as the one who went in. Reliving his family's pain had driven him move than half crazy. He sometimes wondered if Adora had lived, given that were both long past mourning, they would have still fit together.

He had never asked Jeb if she, thinking her husband was dead, had moved on.

"I thought my heart was dead, as cold and hard as that coffin Zero trapped me in. The last thing I expected was this little slip of a girl would show me it was still beating, then steal it away."

"Steal it... wait. Does that mean... You—" her voice caught, tears welling in her eyes. "Do you love me?"

He cradled her face in his hands and carefully wiped the tears away with his thumbs. "Don't you know?"

"We never... you never..." She swallowed. "I always assumed..."

At first he'd avoided the words in the vain hope that not giving definition to feelings he shouldn't have would make them go away. When his emotions had tightened their hold on him and found a mirror in hers, he'd been afraid to shatter his fragile peace with the hope of anything more than the moment. As time went on, the bonds between them strengthened in silent promise and he'd assumed his devotion was embarrassingly obvious.

He'd always been an idiot about these things.

"I love you, DG. Have since I knew I shouldn't. All that idiotic courage and the bleeding heart, never caring when you're in over your head or should look to your own safety, the most wonderful, caring, compassionate, selfless person alive—now why are you crying?"

She buried her face against his neck and tightened her arms around him in a rib bruising hug. "Because I love you, and you love me, and... oh, you stop laughing, Wyatt Cain."

"Hmm." He hid his grin in her hair. "It shouldn't be such a surprise. I've been showing you how I felt the whole time. Seems I should demonstrate all the ways I've been wordlessly declaring my love, make sure you don't miss them again."

"You might have to show me again and again, so I never forget."

"I'll keep at it as long as you need," he murmured against her lips.

"Then it's settled," she whispered back. "You can keep at it forever."

The tension that wound through him eased. It was like some part of him, so long dislocated he'd ceased to notice the pain, suddenly popped back into place. He breathed out the past in a sigh and breathed in the future with the woman he loved. "Forever it is."


End file.
